Environmental management accounting in Lithuania: exploratory study of current practices, opportunities and strategic intents

There is a growing consensus among the Lithuanian policy makers, practitioners and industrialists that environmental policy must move from a reactive stance to a more proactive, sustainable development approach. As a result, many companies are increasingly interested in the application of economic incentives at least as supplements or reinforcements of environmental standards.The Institute of Environmental Engineering (EU Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Industrial Development (APINI – SID)) in 1992–2003 has been involved in introduction and implementation of preventive environmental strategy in industry in Lithuania and in other countries. In Lithuania, these efforts resulted in the implementation of more than 200 cleaner production innovations in more than 150 Lithuanian companies. It should be stressed that effective plant maintenance is becoming a higher priority to plant managers. It is important to ensure cost-savings, at all levels, that include maximizing productivity and implementing energy-saving approaches. Effective and efficient maintenance are not just desirable, but fundamental to profitable business operations. Therefore, central to the environmental view of sustainable development is the concept that economic and social systems are sub-systems of the global environment.APINI's experience shows that decision-makers at the company level often fail to recognize the economic values of natural resources as assets as well as the business and financial value of good environmental performance. Therefore, there is a need to upgrade the business decision-making process by including information on material flows and related costs to account for efforts of sustainable development [Staniskis JK, Stasiskiene Z. Promotion of cleaner production investments: international experience. Journal of Cleaner Production 2002;11(6):619–28. ISSN: 0959-6526, Elsevier Science]. Decisions are increasingly affected by environmental costs. Application of environmental management accounting (EMA), which integrates two of the main principles of sustainable development – environment and economics, can help to significantly improve corporate decision-making.EMA is becoming increasingly important not only for environmental management decisions and development of environmental management systems (EMS), but also for all types of routine management activities, such as product and process design, cost allocation and control, capital budgeting, purchasing, product pricing and performance evaluation.Companies, which use EMA as a part of integrated management system, are provided with accurate and comprehensive information for the measurement and reporting of environmental performance.This paper investigates the current state of EMA practices in Lithuanian SMEs that have already been or are being implementing EMS and which have implemented CP innovations. In this case, EMA is analysed as an innovative assessment and evaluation method of EMS and CP innovation's environmental impacts and economic benefits. It should be stressed, that there are obvious differences in case studies from different industries. However, review of the results shows that there are many similarities in what improvements can be suggested for environmentally concerned companies both in terms of environmentally sound operation and for reporting of environmental management accounting information.